History and Vision at O'Reilly's TOC

If the first day of O'Reilly's Tools of Change for Publishing conference seemed all about the nitty-gritty of XML, digital workflow and Web analytics, day two brought out the stars and visionaries of the digital publishing universe offering historical perspective on everything that was said the previous day.

HarperCollins president Brian Murray detailed how his very traditional house, initially wary of digitization, managed to devise a forward-looking technology strategy that has led HC to a sophisticated digital infrastructure consistent with the demands of publishing in the era of the Internet. Celebrated Long Tail author Chris Anderson offered a short history on the economics of giving stuff away (in order to sell something else) as a prelude to discussing his next book, Free, and plans to work with his publisher to give away for free as many copies of the thing as he can. Conference host Tim O'Reilly was ubiquitous, presenting a short and humorous history of publishing ("by 1501 A.D. books were being blamed for spreading blatant errors as much as truth. Sounds like Wikipedia").

Remember, O'Reilly coined the phrase Web 2.0, articulating the broad notion of next-generation Web publishing and the buzzwords of that movement—"collective intelligence," "networks," "sharing," "user-generated"—popped up in virtually every TOC presentation. At one point O'Reilly quipped, "Why don't we just add peace and love to the list?" While book publishing is the focus here, after a few sessions of projections, traditional book publishing could seem like it's in its last throes.

But Murray's account of Harper's "retooling" impressed the audience of about 400 or so attendees, which included a fair number of New York publishing professionals. "In 2005 we looked at digital publishing," he said, "but we weren't sure if it represented a crisis or an opportunity." His step-by-step account of HarperCollins's self-analysis and transformation from old school house to cost-cutting digital publisher, warehouser, distributor and book-widget innovator certainly aligned him with the futurists. HC now has 12,000 titles in its digital warehouse; 6,000 titles on its Web site; and full control, quality and otherwise, over its digital inventory.

Anderson's presentation was particularly exciting, but may prove problematic for his publisher, Hyperion, and perhaps booksellers. Beginning with radio, Anderson says, the modern mass market economy has been based on the efficiencies of "giving stuff away once it costs the same to reach one person or a million people." He's looking for ways to give away his next book—maybe as a free audiobook download or maybe as an e-book locked to the Sony Reader; giving out rebates or publishing an online or print book with ads were other possibilities tossed out by Anderson. Why? Because he's selling himself, his personal appearances, and wants to reach what he calls "the new influentials," those interested in the unconventional, like bloggers, but whose cultural power may be unrecognized by the mainstream. "I love my publisher," he said when asked why he didn't self-publish the book, "but this is an experiment I want to do within the publishing system."

Overall the attendees at TOC seem happy with the programming, but there is the occasional grumble that Monday's three and a half hour "tutorials" were too long and still didn't offer enough detail. But TOC is trying to offer a balance between the technical and the supertechnical; panelists (including Tim O'Reilly) hang around all day, and anyone can grab them in the hallway to ask more questions.

Best afternoon sessions included Jim Lichtenberg's presentation on RFID—Radio Frequency Identification—and how the Dutch bookstore chain Seleyz has used it to cut costs, reduce theft and study how its customers use its stores. Gavin Bell's presentation of social software examined how people use books (read, purchase, recommend, discuss) and software such as flickr, Typepad or MySpace that creates communities that facilitate that behavior. And Cliff Guren's session on Microsoft's Live Search Books noted that, although it's playing catchup on the book search front, the site's functionality, high-res graphics and publisher control of rights could make it an attractive alternative to Google.

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales closed out the day with an overview of his new project, Wikia, a separate though perhaps even quirkier venture in "free culture." Unlike Wikipedia, Wikia is for-profit, and Wales described it as a library rather than an online encyclopedia—a library that emphasizes eccentric though potentially publishable information, like 14,000 articles on the Muppets (Wikipedia has about 300) and 34,000 articles on the online game World of WarCraft. "There's a real possibility to turn this into a [print] book project," said Wales. "Wikia is really strong on geek culture."